them, whom he called ‘apostles’: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother
Andrew; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew; Matthew and Thomas; James son of Alpheus
and Simon called the Zealot; Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who would be the traitor.

Coming down the hill with them Jesus stood in an open plain. Many of his disciples were there, and
a large crowd of people, who had come from all parts of Judea and Jerusalem, and from the coastal
cities of Tyre and Sidon. They gathered to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And people
troubled by unclean spirits were cured. The entire crowd tried to touch him, because of the power that
went out from him and healed them all.

Reflect:

There are times when I have prayed hard before taking certain decisions that mattered most, only to
realize later that they have “backfired” and left me wondering if I made my decisions correctly. I am sure
you would have had similar experiences as well. Today’s passage should put us at ease. Even Jesus’
own decision to choose the apostles, arrived after a whole night of prayer, seems to have “backfired”
with the choice of Judas. In our “common sense” we wonder if Jesus couldn’t have chosen better!
However, in the “gospel-sense”, we know that it was all part of the grand design of God, and Jesus’
decisions, arrived at after hours of prayer, were perfectly in alignment with God’s will. It must console
us: if we have arrived at decisions after sincere efforts at discerning God’s will and hours of prayer,
even when they are seemingly disastrous, we can rest assured that our decisions are safe within
the grand design of God.

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